Category archive for: technology

I am teaching Introduction to Programming for Information Professionals, online, for the University of Maryland this semester. My colleague, Bill Kules, has taught this class (in person) several times and has included social justice/critical perspectives aspects in at least one prior semester (docx). We talked about including it in each…

Pittsburgh’s Code & Supply just held a huge (1500 people) conference over the last three days, and of course I’d signed up to attend months ago, because 1) local 2) affordable 3) tech conference 4) with a code of conduct they seemed serious about. Plus, “Abstractions” is a really cool…

I have a whole series of posts coming up, where I talk about hospitality in a particular context (spoiler: the context is interviewing and hiring). But some recent threads on the Code4Lib listserv make me want to write about it in a different context, maybe a little more broadly. Also,…

I’m on the other side of the state to attend Code4Lib this week. This is my third Code4Lib, and it just keeps getting better every year! If you aren’t here, but you’d like to see the talks (starting tomorrow morning, Tuesday), there will be a live stream on the Code4Lib…

“We’ve got a pipeline problem, so let’s build a better pipeline.” –Bess Sadler, Code4Lib 2014 Conference (the link goes to the video) I’ve been thinking hard (for two years, judging by the draft date on this post) about how to grow as a programmer, when one is also a librarian.…

An important piece of internet privacy is under attack, and I’m asking for help protecting it. The EFF explains it well, but short version: every domain (the part of a web address that comes after “www” and includes something like “.org” or “.com” — in the case of this blog,…

Edit, over a month later: Turns out, something very much like the device I was complaining that nobody had designed has since been announced. It’s fairly attractive, can be worn in a number of different ways (no word on its accuracy, though), and it has an inactivity alert. Bonus: it…

I think there are two keys to why I was a successful electrical engineer, when I did not (initially) succeed as a computer scientist—despite being more interested in the latter, to begin with, and despite wanting to pursue the latter now. The first key: invisible struggle, no displays of fallibility…

I started writing my annual changing-of-the-calendar-year post, and I realized I was spilling a lot of virtual ink on, arguably, a pretty small aspect of my year — because, while it’s kind of unimportant, in the scheme of things, it also takes a little explanation. And it’s fun! So, rather…